A replica
of James Bond's silver-painted Aston Martin from the movie Goldfinger is a museum highlight..

So what has he learned after nearly 30 years of teaching history via vivid
stories in museum settings all across America?

He pats Nipper's head and smiles. "Well, I think I've learned
that nothing is black and white. The more you learn about history, the more you
realize that it's mostly a matter of grays. Take the Cold War for example.
How you tell that story depends on your point of view, doesn't it? Obviously,
motivations and strategies differed, depending on which side you happened to
be on.

"Or how about the Vietnam War? What was the war, when all is said and done?
Were we really liberating a country, or were we trying to replace a colonial
empire [the French] with our own form of colonialism? In hindsight, it becomes
very difficult to be certain about what was going on. And I think we wind up
talking about grays, rather than black and white."

Another important lesson, he says, has been his growing recognition
of the fact that when it comes to understanding history--the authentic
look and feel of things in the moment--capturing and presenting a
few spare details is often more effective than writing a long dissertation.

Ask him to recall his own years at Oberlin, for example, and he'll talk
at length about the excitement of studying history in classes where he was stretched
to the limit. But push him to recall a specific moment that captures the "texture" of
that Oberlin era (1967-72, in his case), and he'll surprise you. "I
think one of my strongest memories of college is actually the smell of tear gas.

"We went to Washington in 1970 for one of the big anti-Vietnam War
protests on the Mall, and somewhere up around Lafayette Park, we got tear-gassed
by the
cops. That's a smell--and a moment--that you don't forget!"

So can we truly know history? Are we capable of understanding the forces
that shape it?

Among the
tools of the spy trade on display at the museum are a one-bullet lipstick
gun, a buttonhole camera, and a shoe radio

For Barrie, creator of historical museums, the answer is a highly
qualified "yes.
But only the broad outlines," he insists. "We may never be able to
answer such questions as whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or whether a
KGB defector like Yuri Nosenko [who left Russia for the U.S. in 1964, and whose
bona fides were debated for a generation inside the CIA] really switched over
to our side or not. As for our own double agents--people like CIA operative
Aldrich Ames [sentenced to life in 1994 for betraying U.S. secrets]--how
can we ever really hope to understand their motivations, their psychology?"

But Barrie doesn't seem to mind this state of affairs. He's enjoying
his current role enormously, he says, as the éminence grise of some of
America's most exciting museums.

"As you grow a bit older, you start to understand that human events are
full of complexity, amazing complexity. And you realize that there's no
shortage of ambiguity, either. It's all so tangled and huge. Sometimes
life seems like a great labyrinth, with meanings and interpretations up for grabs
at every step of the way.

"But that suits me just fine, because it allows for creativity," he
adds. "I wake up each morning, and I can't wait to get into the office.
Why? Because of the questions I know will be greeting me as soon as I walk in
that door!"